


rien à faire

by typervoxilations



Series: A Series of Unfortunate FEELINGS AND MISERY [2]
Category: Tokyo Ghoul
Genre: Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Dystopia, Alternate Universe - Parallel Universes, Alternate Universe - Psychopaths in Love, Angst, M/M, Timeline jumpers, Universe jumpers
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-12-21
Updated: 2014-12-21
Packaged: 2018-03-02 11:06:39
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,356
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2810009
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/typervoxilations/pseuds/typervoxilations
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Written for the TokyoGhoulFicXchange. </p><p>  <i>He loses track of time like this, slipping back and forth between the tears in the fabric of existence; loses track of his reality. There is only one constant, but if a constant keeps forgetting what it is, can it still be called a constant?</i></p>
            </blockquote>





	rien à faire

**Author's Note:**

  * For [antagonists](https://archiveofourown.org/users/antagonists/gifts).



> Loosely inspired by gobelin animation’s [One Day](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vFART6ZMeEA&list=UU-vrN89jIox3XqAKbEMeFgQ&index=92).  
> From what I’ve gathered, _’rien à faire’_ translates loosely as ‘nothing to do’ or ‘not belonging,’ so those are the meanings that I’ve chosen for this fic. 
> 
> I'm not sure I interpreted this right.
> 
> It's a little early for this but merry Christmas ; v;

 

* * *

 

“  
 _One day, whether you_

_are 14,_  
 _28_  
 _or 65_  
  
 _you will stumble upon_  
 _someone who will start_  
 _a fire in you that cannot die._  
  
 _However, the saddest,_  
 _most awful truth_  
 _you will ever come to find––_  
  
 _is they are not always_  
 _with whom we spend our lives._

”

 **Beau Taplin** , "The Awful Truth" 

 

* * *

 

 

The barely existent tide shifts over the sands with a hush, like the rattling rasp of a dying man's last breath.

 

The heavy, warm breeze cards through his hair, slithers through his loose clothing, with the damp scent of salt water and iron.

 

There is no sun where he is, the skies dark with clouds in mourning; bloated clouds that were faces twisted in agony as they oversaw the world below, twisted in the eternal anticipation of perpetual storms.

 

Uta looks up into the depths of the  _undulatus asperatus_ , shifting like moonlit waves reflected in the sky even though there was no longer a moon either, lined with silver when lightning crackled behind its heavy curtains. The thunder in the distance, he muses, is a lot like the rumble of his own fading heartbeat, temporary, as far away as the starlight that was no longer seen in this future.

 

He was alone as far as the eye could see, just him and the last, evaporating ocean and the sky that no longer had the sun to warm its horizons.

 

This was humanity’s future, he realizes with a detached sort of wonder; this was the end of all things, and he was the last being to watch it fall upon itself and disappear.

 

Humans led such pitiful lives, if for all their struggling to stay alive, they would only end up here.

 

Uta thinks of a boy with a kind face lit with a tentative smile who had once been in love with words and wonders what he’s in love with now.

 

(  _remembers that he can't anymore and it's Uta's fault_ )

 

He thinks of gentle eyes that became hardened with reality and wonders if there had ever been a way to prevent it.

 

(  _and if there was, would he have chosen it?_  )

 

He wonders into the receding tide and ocean hisses back; his answer is a damp shoreline and the husks of once living creatures, and he sighs as the world whispers its regrets.

 

* * *

 

Kaneki’s hair blends in well with the snow, and if he lies down still enough, Uta can’t even see him. He watches instead the gentle tufts of white dancing in the air above them, dancing like the downy wing feathers of celestial creatures, reaching out with a pale hand already frozen with the cold to try and catch them.

 

“What are you thinking about?”

 

(  _nothing,_ Uta wants to say.  _everything._  )

 

Uta doesn’t answer at first, feeling a snowflake melt away at his fingertip and trickle down the length of his finger before disappearing from his line of sight into the space between his fingers like a glittering crystalline teardrop.

 

“Nothing in particular.”

 

Kaneki hums like he doesn’t believe him but doesn’t press the topic. "The sky is so far away." Kaneki murmurs instead and Uta voices an agreement ( or a disagreement, possibly. it's harder to tell without actual words ). "Do you believe that the weather is a reflection of it's emotions?"

 

(  _no. yes. maybe._ )

 

The cold droplet slithers past Uta's wrist and into the folds of his jacket and he is reminded of another time, a future-past, a chilly shoreline and a bleak, gray horizon; and he thinks that if the statement were true then the sky's tears were too cold and detached from the world to be part of an actual emotion.

 

(  _the irony of the thought doesn't escape him_  )

 

"The sky can't have any emotions." Uta replies after a full heartbeat. "It doesn't even really exist."

 

"Haha, Uta-san, you're so literal."

 

(  _he is a poet in every lifetime, every world_  )

 

Uta doesn’t belong in this world.

 

“I’m leaving tomorrow.”

 

Uta wonders why he chooses to tell this Kaneki so, and Kaneki hums again, barely a change in the tone of his voice.

 

“I see.”

 

For a while, all Uta can feel is the white purity and he is the stain that is slowly seeping into its roots.

 

“Do you know where you’re going to go?”

 

“Does anyone really know?”

 

“I guess not. Will you be coming back?”

 

“No.”

 

This Kaneki isn’t inquisitive, and he leaves it at that, and Uta will forever remember the way he looked in the snow, like an angel, peaceful and serene, like a corpse, eyes closed and unsmiling, frozen and ethereal like a creature distant from the world and maybe in some ways he always has been.

 

Maybe Kaneki has always been Uta's sky.

 

* * *

 

Uta visits a world he once knew, a time before everything went wrong, and for a few brief moments, he appears to have caught the single, hazel-colored eye of the boy he had been staring at, but by the time the crowd passes, it will have been like he had never been there at all.

 

It's not a world he can continue to belong in anymore; it's no longer his world.

 

* * *

 

The bodies fall, swatted down like flies on a hot summer day, heavy muted thuds like something far away.

 

He closes his eyes and curls in on himself like the monsters wouldn't be able to hurt him if he pretended they didn't exist.

 

(  _he tries not to see the blank hazel eyes of the motionless body at his feet_  )

 

* * *

 

He tries detaching himself from his original timeline, his alpha world, to an alternate universe where none of them existed before.

 

It only takes a handful of days jumping between isolated locations to realize the silence of solitude only amplified the noise in his head.

 

It's worse imagining what could have been said.

 

He returns instead to blood-soaked battlegrounds and corpses strewn as far as the eye could see because at least here the voices were quieter.

 

(  _because here, in these worlds, Kaneki is there to quiet them for him_  )

 

* * *

 

It's snowing again.

 

Uta feels as if he's randomly letting himself slip through the cracks with no real destination now that he's seen the end. He loses track of time like this, slipping back and forth between the tears in the fabric of existence; loses track of his reality. There is only one constant, but if a constant keeps forgetting what it is, can it still be called a constant?

 

Somehow everything remains the same.

 

A stranger with a familiar face smiles up at him, except that he's not really much of a stranger at all even though he is. 

 

This Kaneki is still in love with words and beauty but Uta knows it won't take long for his reality to begin to collapse around him.

 

None of the others were particularly happy either.

 

(  _he wonders if it's partially his fault as well and given his past influences, it isn't a stretch_  )

 

In this world, everything is normal, human, mundane.

 

He could get used to living like this.

 

(  _he won't_  )

 

* * *

  

He can shatter the cycle any time he wants. The only reason everything ends up falling apart is because he is the one who keeps making the same choices no matter where he ends up.

 

(  _but_   _Kaneki reaches out and even when Uta grabs hold with no intention of letting go, it still ends up wrong_  )

 

(  _"Come with me." Uta offers once; he refuses to think that it sounds like a plea_  )

 

(  _Kaneki smiles patiently - "That's not how this works"  - and steps backwards off the edge of the roof_  )

 

* * *

 

Kaneki is thunder and starlight - Uta wonders how far he would go to catch up, how many times he would keep trying until he did.

 

( _maybe he won't, ever, but he brushes his hand over the familiar texture of headstone marble before he lets the tide of time snag at him and carry him onwards to the next timeline, the next world, until he finds the one where the sky is close enough for him to touch and his heartbeat echoes forever into eternity even if there's nothing there any longer_ )


End file.
